In order to increase the quality of the work provided by aircraft crews and the comfort of their passengers, airplane builders are tending to implant computer servers in airplanes, e.g. in order to enable the crew to access data relating to the flight and/or to enable passengers to access programs for entertainment or amusement.
In an airplane, the onboard electrical equipment is generally powered by electricity produced by one or more alternators driven by the engine(s) of the airplane.
The operating constraints on the alternators mean there is a risk of the voltage on the power supply network dropping out for periods that may be as long as 200 milliseconds (ms).
Unfortunately, in computer servers such voltage dropouts can lead to a sudden loss of service, possibly accompanied by a loss of data.
In order to obviate that drawback, it is known, when using such networks that present such voltage dropouts, to connect each computer server to the power supply network via a battery associated with special electronics for keeping the battery charged by the network. An inverter is interposed between the battery and the server to reproduce the alternating current (AC) that normally powers the computer server. Computer servers are then no longer affected by any fluctuations in voltage that might occur on the power supply network. Nevertheless, such an architecture presents efficiency that is mediocre under normal operating conditions. In addition, increasing the number of batteries leads to a large increase in weight and in bulk, which is penalizing for use in an airplane.